


Reaching in the Dark

by notsafeforowls



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amputation, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-06-10 09:23:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15288477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notsafeforowls/pseuds/notsafeforowls
Summary: After the death of his estranged uncle, Mick takes a break from the Waverider to make sure that his uncle’s bookshop doesn’t fall into his aunt’s hands, and to sell it on. He isn’t planning on sticking around any longer than necessary, and he’s not planning on playing the hero while he’s in Keystone City.A year and a half after leaving the Waverider, Nate’s living in Keystone City and just trying to stay under the radar. And inside, aside from the few days a month that he manages to force himself to leave his apartment and venture to his office at the museum.Unfortunately, Keystone has a rising crime rate and needs a few heroes.Even more unfortunately (for everyone involved), Nate and Mick may be the only options.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The End of Love by Florence + The Machine.
> 
> Diverges from canon after the season 3 finale.

**2018**

“I hate demons.” Mick nudged the remains of the animal with the toe of his boot. It had been a deer at some point, or maybe a pig. It was hard to tell when it was inside-out. “We could be going anything else right now. I could be drinking. Or watching the game.”

 

“Or both. I was going to make wings,” Nate sighed. “Real ones, too, not the ones that Gideon makes. I got the recipe from that place in Buffalo and—”

 

“Again, you can watch the game whenever you want,” Zari cut in over the earpieces. “We live on a timeship.”

 

“It’s not the same thing,” Mick said.

 

Nate sighed and muttered, “Not again.”

 

“It’s absolutely the same thing. You can even go back and watch it live if you want to.”

 

“It’s not the same if you have to put in all that effort.”

 

“Am I going to have to listen to this argument again?”

 

Ava. There was a long moment of silence except for the sound of someone – Sara, maybe even Nora – trying not to laugh. Then Ava sighed and the earpieces were silent once again.

 

“I’ll agree that it’s better to watch a game without time-travelling to see it if you agree to share the snacks,” Zari said. “If you tell me the recipe for that batter, I’ll even –”

 

There was a high noise that sounded like metal grinding together right in his ear as Zari was cut off. Mick ripped his earpiece out and threw it as far away as he could. Beside him, Nate clamped his hands over his ears.

 

A groan echoed through the building. Mick reached for the heat gun while Nate prepared to steel up if necessary. They looked at each other, Mick silently gesturing for Nate to go ahead of him.

 

“Why me?” Nate hissed.

 

“You can steel up.”

 

“You have a gun.”

 

“Ugh, I _really_ hate demons.” Nate stepped in front of Mick as they started along the corridor. “You ever get a really bad feeling about something, but you have no idea why? And I don’t mean just because someone’s said they’ve got a plan.”

 

“No,” Mick said, “and stop putting it off.” He jabbed Nate lightly in the back with the heat gun, smirking at the indignant look that earned him. “Move.”

 

 

*

 

 

**2020**

 

“A water demon? I don’t know, Mick, isn’t that a bit… boring? They were fighting demons escaped from a hell dimension in the last book. I don’t think a water demon will cut it.” Zari wrinkled her nose as she picked up another handful of cheese puffs, careful not to drop any on the sheets of paper spread across the table in front of her.

 

“I’ve got it all planned out. See, it can do all the possession stuff like the normal ones.” Mick upended another bag of cheese puffs into the bowl (store-bought, not ship-fabricated, and Zari was glad because the Waverider’s cheese puffs didn’t taste much like cheese) and gestured towards the galley around them. “But it can travel through any liquids.”

 

Zari stared at the glasses of water in front of them. “Okay, getting creepier now. How did you think of that?”

 

“I believe Mr Rory came up with the idea when the shower was leaking and flooded the corridor outside the bathroom,” Gideon chimed in.

 

“It’s rude to listen in on people’s conversations.”

 

“I was once informed by Miss Jiwe that it ‘doesn’t count’ if the person you’re talking to is yourself.”

 

“She’s got us there,” Zari said, “and I think I suddenly know why Amaya always knew so much about everyone on this ship. But we were talking to each other, Gideon, which makes you rude.”

 

“I apologise. However, I must inform Mr Rory that someone is attempting to contact him from Keystone City using his emergency contact number.”

 

That was weird. Zari didn’t know a lot about Mick’s life outside the ship but one thing she did know was, other than Zari herself, he had the fewest links to anyone who wasn’t on it. And the only time he’d ever mentioned Keystone City had been when he’d been telling them about the time he’d had to return something a friend of his had stolen from there because he’d known the owner.

 

Mick frowned. “Who?”

 

“A lawyer from the offices of McKinnon and Kershaw. I believe that it’s regarding a personal matter, as there hasn’t been any supernatural activity in the area, and the message they’ve left is very vague and urges you to contact them. I’ve already sent the number to your phone.”

 

After Mick left, Zari kept reading through the outline. The initially weak antagonists aside, it looked like it was going to be a strong sequel to the first one. Which hopefully meant that Zari would have less of a problem convincing Mick to submit this one to the publisher when he finished it. The process of getting him to even look for an agent for the first one had required her to use every single way that she and her brother had annoyed each other until Mick had given up and agreed just to get her to stop. Behrad’s favourite trick, working out where Zari was going to be and getting there before she did to annoy her, had been particularly useful.

 

She wasn’t sure how long it had been when Mick returned. He stood in front of the fabricator for a few minutes, just staring at it.

 

“Mick?” Zari asked. He didn’t move. “Mick?” Still nothing. “Mick!”

 

He turned around slowly, looking surprisingly lost, as if he had no idea what he was supposed to be doing, or why he was supposed to be doing it.

 

“My uncle died.”

 

 

*

 

 

At first Nate thought the pain had woken him up. That wasn’t exactly unusual these days, but it still took him a few seconds to realise that his phone was vibrating across the bedside cabinet, blaring an Elvis song. He slid across the bed until he could grab the phone with one hand and the bottle of pills with the other.

 

“Yeah?” he said after glancing at the photo on the screen. Nate pushed the bottle against the headboard until the safety feature released, turning it one-handed with practiced ease.

 

“What did I do to deserve this?” Thomas asked.

 

Nate swallowed a few of the pills dry, grimacing at the way the chalky tablets stuck to his tongue before he replied, “Became a quantum physicist.”

 

“Funny. No, really, did I offend someone in a past life? So far this morning, Elizabeth forgot her passport and I had to drive to the airport in the middle of the night, with Roni asleep in the backseat, then the babysitter cancelled everything this week because a pipe burst in her apartment and the water company said they’ll get to her ‘sometime this week’ to fix it. Oh, and do you want to hear the best part?”

 

“Always.” Nate sat up and winced as he put his right foot on the ground just long enough to grab the crutch propped against the other side of the table. Oh, yeah, he’d overdone it last night. He’d known that running after the guy who’d tried to shoot him was a bad idea, but he hadn’t been able to resist. It had been the thrill that had made him confident, had made him feel like himself again.

 

“I got a call from the camp the twins are at with their class. Someone was bullying Emily, so Chloe punched the girl in the face and broke her nose in two places.”

 

Nate laughed before he could stop himself, even as he slowly made his way out of his bedroom and down the short hallway to the kitchen/sitting room combination.

 

“I thought you’d find it funny. She told the camp counsellor that she learned it from Uncle Nate.”

 

“In my defence, she’s only supposed to use it if someone hits her first.”

 

Nate leaned against the kitchen counter as he waited for the coffee maker to finish its damn job. He knew that it was just an illusion, the discomfort making it feel like he was having to stand for longer, but it always seemed like it took longer on the bad days. Everything took longer on the bad days. The only good thing was that he knew by now that his leg wouldn’t hurt as much tomorrow, and it would be back to the baseline level by the day after. Baseline pain wasn’t great, but it was more of an annoyance than the ‘you did some damage last night, so here, feel the steel slowly repairing it inside your leg with every single step’ level.

 

He let himself tune out most of what Thomas was saying as he stared at the coffee slowly dripping down into the pot. They’d known each other since the day they’d moved into their college dorm and found themselves roommates. They had been friends for so long that Nate knew most of what he was saying already. A quick update on the twins, something about what his youngest daughter Roni was learning at school, a few sentences about his own job (he was lecturing now and regretting it; why had he decided to leave his nice research job for this?), something about Elizabeth’s latest work at the hospital (something revolutionary that was getting her attention worldwide), and then whatever was important.

 

“I know this is last minute, but can you watch Roni on Friday after school? I have a meeting with the board of directors and Elizabeth is still at the conference. Emily and Chloe aren’t due back until the evening and I’ve already made arrangements for my sister to pick them up from the airport, so it would just be Roni. Maybe you can teach her how to beat up bullies.” There was a crash in the background. “Just leave it, we’ll tidy it up when we get home.”

 

The coffee machine finally finished and Nate poured the entire pot into the largest mug he owned. He’d drink it eventually, even if it was ice cold by the time he finished. Holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder, the mug in his left hand, and leaning heavily on the crutch, Nate made his way to the messy desk in the corner of the little room that been a real sitting room at one point, but now more closely resembled the forts he’d built as a kid. The window was covered with a thin sheet to keep the sunlight off the books and screens, the walls were lined with bookcases, with every available flat surface also having been covered with books, including a couch that Nate hadn’t even used since he’d first moved in. The only clear route was a wide path that led from the end of the room, right to the desk.

 

“Yeah, no problem, I don’t have to go to the museum for at least another week.”

 

The piece of paper that he’d torn out of the _Keystone City Gazette_ a few days before caught his eye.

 

_MILLER, Charles. Beloved brother and treasured friend, passed away suddenly._

 

Some stuff about a funeral (yesterday), and a mention of him having been a pillar of the community. It was the name of the shop that had caught Nate’s eye, though. Miller’s Books.

 

“I think I know why you haven’t had a call about picking up that book you ordered for me,” Nate said as he opened up the book on the top of the pile to the last page he’d marked. He’d managed to trace the necklace across fifty years and two continents, but it still vanished in the 1850s, and he was determined to find it. There were only a few ways it could have left the museum it had been kept in then, so it wouldn’t be that much work, unlike the unusually ornate Egyptian khopesh, which had been evading him for months. Sometimes he still tracked people down, but it usually reminded Nate too much of how he’d found the Legends, so he tried to stick to objects. That had been his original specialty, after all.

 

“Please, please tell me that it was accidentally sent to the museum and you can pick it up the next time you go in – Veronica, put the cat down, we’re already running late!”

 

“Oh, no, we’re not that lucky. The owner died.”

 

Thomas swore, then swore again when he realised what he’d said. “God, I hope Roni doesn’t repeat that… I don’t have time to go and see if anyone’s at the shop. He did have a family, right?”

 

“Uh, I think so.” Nate remembered the man mentioning a sister at some point, and maybe a nephew. Although that didn’t mean very much – Nate had a family, even if they didn’t know where he was, and thought he was halfway around the world. He took a slow breath. “I can see if I can pick it up on Friday, if you want me to.”

 

There was silence on the other end of the phone for so long that Nate coughed.

 

“Did you get cut off?” he asked.

 

“No, I’m just wondering if this has anything to do with the mysterious steel man who’s been running around Keystone recently.”

 

Nate glanced over his shoulder at his costume, still hanging where he’d left it when he’d finally made it home. Thomas was one of the only people who knew that he was Steel, and the only person who knew about his leg and _hadn’t_ been on the Waverider when it had happened. “Maybe. It’s not a big deal."

 

“Says the guy who’s hardly left his apartment for over a year.”

 

“I go to work,” Nate offered half-heartedly. He _had_ , but he’d also worked from home most of the time, rather than travelling to the museum and using his office. There were too many people there who would notice that he walked differently now, too many detectors which would be easy to set off with his right knee and everything below it. Too many times he looked around and realised that he had absolutely no control over the situation, and instantly remembered that day. “I was with you when you ordered that book. Roni loved that place. She would have stayed there all day if you’d let her.”

 

Nate would have stayed there too, even with the stairs leading to the seats downstairs and the old history books. He’d never seen a selection like that outside of museums, or the officers of other historians. The place even had a room with its own environmental controls to keep the oldest ones in good condition.

 

“Okay but do me a favour and get something for Emily and Chloe if Roni convinces you to get her something; I’ll pay you back, I just don’t want to deal with sulky eleven-year-olds next week because Uncle Nate got Roni a present and not them. Can I drop her off at your place at five? I don’t have a class then.”

 

“Yeah, it’s no big deal.”

 

“Thanks. I owe you, and I’ll call on Thursday night. Roni, let’s go!”

 

“You’re going to be in a lot of trouble if I ever decide to collect on that,” Nate said before he hung up to avoid the inevitable tantrum that he knew Roni was going to throw as soon as she had to put her shoes on and leave the house.

 

It was a big deal, and Nate almost regretted suggesting it as soon as he hung up. There wouldn’t be any metal detectors in a bookshop to go haywire when he went near them. There were stairs, but he made it up more whenever he came back to his apartment. And there couldn’t be that much that was unpredictable in the bookshop. It was in a quiet part of town, there hadn’t been any supernatural activity, and there wasn’t even much criminal activity around there compared to the rest of the city.

 

As much as he hated to admit it, Thomas was right; Nate had hardly left his apartment unless he absolutely had to over the last year, and the only reason he’d even considered going out regularly had been because one of his neighbours had been mugged and he’d realised that Keystone City was sorely needed at least one more vigilante.

 

Even if the only one they were going to get was a guy who could barely tolerate leaving his apartment without his full costume on, and whose right leg was now half steel.

 

As if on cue, his knee gave a particularly painful throb.

 

“Shut up,” he muttered, and switched on his laptop to begin working. He’d worry about having to leave the apartment when he had to; for now, Nate needed to make sure he earned his pay check so that he could pay the rent, or he’d be leaving for good.

 

 

*

 

 

Mick squinted at the paperwork, trying to work out if the squiggle in the middle of the security code was a second ‘1’ or the first ‘7.’ It looked like a messed-up hybrid of both. He’d never been able to read his uncle’s handwriting, and it was strangely reassuring that age had never managed to improve it. What was less reassuring was standing in the poorly lit street at six in the morning, feeling like he was trying to rob it, even though Miller’s Books now technically belonged to him. Or would when he finally got inside for the first time since he was twenty-one.

 

Beside him, Wally was chatting away happily, having moved on from various stories about Keystone to stories about his own experience with the bookshop.

 

“I can’t believe you own this place. I practically lived here when I was a kid. My mom used to work a few blocks away, so I’d come here if she hadn’t finished her shift when school got out. The owner used to let me sit behind the counter if I had homework to work on and – I think it’s a seven.” Wally shrugged when Mick looked at him. “What? I told you I spent a lot of time here.”

 

“Hmph.” Mick prodded the security code into the pad and waited for the alarm to go off. Nothing happened. Damn kid was too smart for his own good sometimes. When Zari had said that someone was meeting him outside the lawyer’s office after he finished, he’d half-expected Zari herself, or maybe even Ray.  He’d been more than a little surprised to see Wally, considering that Wally had been halfway around the world the last time they’d spoken. “Lucky guess, Sunshine.” He unlocked the door and waved Wally in. “Anything else I need to know about this place?”

 

“Uh.” Wally dropped the small box that they’d collected from the lawyer’s office on the counter and turned around slowly. “I don’t think so. It looks the same as it did the last time I was here, just dustier. Well, other than _that_.”

 

 _That_ was a large book sitting beside the register. There was a neon orange post-in on the cover with ‘THOMAS MACDONALD – ASAP’ scrawled across it. Or possibly ‘TABITHA MACDONALD.’ A customer order, Mick assumed, and one more stupid thing he’d have to deal with while he was in town.

 

“Can I look around?” Wally asked. “I haven’t been here for years, but it would be faster than you reading all of those notes.”

 

Yeah, that was something Mick wanted to avoid. If his uncle’s death hadn’t been so sudden, Mick probably would have escaped that. Chuck had always liked to pass on information personally.

 

“Knock yourself out, kid.” Mick stepped behind the counter and started searching through the drawers for anything that would be useful. A few books containing the addresses of customers. Contact information for publishers. Including, Mick noted with some amusement, his own publisher’s. No sign of a floor plan, or anything that would make it easier to work out which section was which.

 

Wally appeared in front of the counter again, grinning.

 

“It hasn’t changed much since the last time I was here. I think Chuck upgraded the stockroom, though; I don’t think he finished before…” Wally trailed off, looking at the pinboard behind the counter. “Well, I don’t think he finished organising the stockroom before he went into hospital.”

 

 _Before he died_. Mick didn’t say anything, just started to look around the shop. The sections on the ground floor were still the same ones he remembered spending hours looking around as a kid (crime fiction, romance, thrillers, classics, science-fiction, and fantasy) but they’d all been changed as his uncle had worked on expanding and updating the building. Downstairs, he knew he’d find a coffee machine (which he hoped wasn’t the same one he’d used at twelve to make the worst cup of coffee he’d ever tasted), some old soft couches, a play area for kids, the kids section, and the non-fiction section. Right at the end was the room that his uncle had always been so proud of: the rare books section.

 

Climate-controlled, it contained the sort of things that Mick would have stolen before the Waverider. Things that, one summer in her teens, Lisa _had_ stolen, and Mick had awkwardly broken in to put them back. He’d left a note and some money.

 

“Do you think?” Wally asked, holding a photograph from the pinboard up. It was the oldest one there, of Mick and his uncle sitting at the counter together.

 

His mom had taken that, Mick realised. It had been six months before the fire, and they’d come to Keystone to stay for the weekend, leaving his dad to drink himself into a stupor alone.  It had been after the last time his dad had caught him with his lighter; the cast on his right arm wasn’t visible in the photo. He forced himself to look away from it.

 

“What?”

 

“Do you think we ever saw each other? I spent a lot of time here.”

 

“I was out of Keystone years before you were born, kid. Probably would have been stuck babysitting you if I’d still been around.” Uncle Chuck had liked to give Mick jobs around the shop if he was in Keystone over the summer. Keeping an eye on the kids downstairs while their parents shopped had been a favourite, because Mick had been old enough that they listened, but not so old that they had looked at him as a ‘real’ adult.

 

“Oh, that explains it.”

 

“Explains what?”

 

Wally waved his hand vaguely. “The kid thing.”

 

“Kid thing?”

 

“Yeah. You’re good with kids.”

 

Huh. He’d never really thought about it that way. He didn’t dislike kids, but he’d never wanted any himself – the one thing that Mick was still grateful for was that he hadn’t had any kids to fuck up – and didn’t want any. But Wally’s baby sister was cute enough, and the look on Joe West’s face when she’d immediately stopped crying whenever Mick picked her up made visiting Central City worth it every time.

 

Mick swiped the sleeve of his jacket across the edge of one of the bookcases. It came away slightly dusty, probably from the four weeks that the shop had stood empty with no one coming, aside from his Aunt Claire. Speaking of…

 

“I’m going to check the apartment; do whatever you want down here.”

 

 

*

 

 

Just to the left of the backdoor were the stairs, the stock room to the right of it, and it felt perversely like coming home for Mick when he picked the correct key without even looking at the keychain and unlocked the bottom lock. Uncle Chuck had never bothered with the top one – _“If they’re already in the shop and they can get through one, I’m already fucked.”_

 

The stairs let him out into a short hallway with multiple doors coming off it. To the left was the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. The room at the end of the hall was a sitting room and kitchen, which had been gutted of anything that Aunt Claire had thought was useful. The couch, fridge, freezer, and two bookcases hadn’t been touched. Everything else was gone, except some bottled water that Mick found in the fridge.

 

Mick checked his uncle’s old bedroom to confirm that it too had been emptied of anything that Claire had liked or disliked. That was one thing he was almost glad for; he didn’t really want to go through everything. The only things left were an empty closet, a bedside cabinet, and a bed with a few boxes sitting on it.

 

The doors on the right side of the hallway led to the spare bedroom and the room Mick had slept in whenever he’d visited, and where he’d stayed for almost a year before sneaking out in the middle of the night and never coming back. The spare room was just as sparse as Mick remembered it having been when he’d been a kid, just with different sheets and wallpaper. The bathroom had been decorated recently, though, which was nice. And the pipes looked like they were in perfect condition.

 

He hesitated for a few seconds before opening the door to his old room.

 

It wasn’t exactly the way he had left it, but Mick could tell from the thick layer of dust that covered everything that Claire hadn’t set foot in the room at all.

 

The bed had been replaced with a double at some point, although it was still covered in the plastic sheets it had probably been delivered in. From the look of the empty shelves in the closet, the clothes he’d left had been donated to a charity a long time ago, but the few books Mick had left were still exactly where he remembered putting them down, including a dog-eared copy of _Watership Down_.

_They’d been whispered for over an hour, but now Aunt Claire was shouting. Mick balanced the flashlight carefully on his knees as he put_ Watership Down _on the desk. Uncle Chuck had said he could take anything from his own bookcases in the sitting room, and he’d never read it before. It had been assigned reading at school, he was sure, but he’d missed those classes when he’d been sent to juvie, and then he hadn’t bothered going back._

_“I don’t know why you agreed to take him in the first place. He killed our sister, Charles!”_

_“What was I supposed to do? He’s our nephew.”_

_“He’s dangerous. You didn’t see the look on his face when my shed caught fire last year. Dick was right; there’s something wrong with that boy.”_

_“Dick doesn’t get to talk about what is or isn’t wrong with anybody else; you’re not stupid, Claire, you know he drank too much, and you_ know _that he treated Carol and Mick badly.”_

 

_Mick put the flashlight down too hard. It hit the desk with a thud and everything went quiet down the hall._

 

There was a stack of dusty old photographs face down on the desk and they didn’t belong to Mick, but he knew what they were.

 

Over thirty years ago, his uncle had said that he’d try to find some photos of Mick’s mother so that he’d have something to remember her by.  Mick had left a week later, before Chuck had time to find them, but he’d obviously gone through with it, and had left them there for decades, just in case Mick returned.

 

He left the photographs where they were and closed the door carefully.

 

 

*

 

 

“Do you know what you’re going to do with the place?” Wally was sitting behind the counter, thumbing through one of the notebooks when Mick got downstairs. He was tapping the fingers of one hand absent-mindedly against the top of the counter, one knee bouncing to a beat that Mick couldn’t hear. Or maybe speedsters didn’t hear anything, they just had to move all the time.

 

Mick shrugged and handed him a bottle of water. “Sell it, probably. I told the idiot lawyer that I’d stick around for six months to run the shop to show them that I can do it, but I don’t think I’ll stay after that.”

 

Claire hadn’t really liked Mick very much before the fire. Afterwards, she’d refused to even be in the same room as him. It hadn’t been a problem for him, but she’d cut off all contact with Chuck over it, after that night they’d argued over him, and there was no way in hell she was getting her greedy hands on Chuck’s pride and joy. Even if it meant Mick having to work with people for six months, and learning about business plans (Gideon had been helpful.)

 

“Not enough excitement?”

 

“Not enough of a reason to stay. Even Lisa’s moved on by now.” To Gotham, where Mick strongly suspected she was annoying the heroes who had started showing up there. Lisa had always been more of a creature of chaos at heart than Mick or Leonard had ever been. He sat down on the step that led up to the crime fiction and thriller sections, leaning against a sturdy display case that held, among other things, a hardback copy of _Alexa_ by Rebecca Bloom. “Zari didn’t tell me you’re living in Keystone right now.”

 

“Oh, no, I’m only here because she told me that you were visiting, and when she mentioned the name of the shop I had to come. I’m all over the place. Sometimes I’m in Central City, sometimes I’m in Star City. I’ve been helping out in Coast City, too – have you ever heard of the Green Lanterns?”

 

“Wasn’t that what the asshole with amnesia was?” Mick couldn’t remember what had happened to that guy. The last thing they’d done with him was drop him in Central City with Red and Cisco, still babbling about rings. Then again, maybe they’d met him again. There were a lot of things that Mick didn’t remember from those six months. Half of what he did remember were things he wanted to forget.

 

“Yeah!” Wally grinned. “It turned out that he belonged in Coast City. He’s still a bit of a douche, but he’s a useful douche.”

 

Like half the people they knew, and according to Cisco, Mick was included in that and it was a compliment. Even Mick had to admit that it was one of the nicer ones he’d been given.

 

“You know who else is possibly in Keystone,” Wally started hopefully, holding up his phone.

 

Mick didn’t even have to look at the screen to know what Wally was showing him. He’d checked the headlines in the Keystone City Gazette every day since the first one had shown up almost a month ago. The article was similar to all the others: a shot from a video posted to YouTube, and a short article about Keystone City’s newest vigilante, and questioning if the new Steel was the same one who had worked out of Central City for a while and had helped to save the world a few times.

 

“I don’t know where he is, and I’m not trying to find him,” Mick said flatly, ignoring the way that Wally’s face fell. They hadn’t even spoken after Nate had left the Waverider; somehow Mick doubted that he would welcome a surprise call or visit from the person who had cauterised the wound after the dwarf star bullets had destroyed his knee beyond repair. And he definitely wouldn’t want a reminder of how Mick had held him down while he screamed as his leg had grown back. “I think I fucked up his life enough.”

 

“It wasn’t your fault.” Wally lowered his phone slowly. “It wasn’t anybody’s fault. If you want to blame somebody, you could blame me for not being fast enough to stop the demon or get you both out of there. Or Constantine for not managing to exorcise the demon in time. Or Ray for not using the anti-magic gun fast enough. Or Zari for—”

 

“I get the point, you can shut up now,” Mick muttered, clambering to his feet. “Come on, Sunshine, you can help me go through the stockroom and make a start on the inventory if you’re going to stick around for a while. No super-speed, your writing makes Uncle Chuck’s look good.”

 

“Oh, man, you know I always wanted to do this when I was a kid; I saw it once and your uncle always had to stop me from sneaking in.”

 

It wasn’t the same thing, Mick thought as they walked downstairs to the stockroom (Wally describing the time Chuck had let him in the stockroom), but he knew that Wally would never admit it. Sure, everyone had fucked up that day, hesitated when they shouldn’t have, but they hadn’t been responsible the way Mick had been.

 

They hadn’t ignored the warning signs for months.

 

They hadn’t had a demon possessing them for months, learning about the ship and the team, until it had finally attacked and almost killed one of his friends.


	2. Chapter 2

**2018**

 

“This is weird, right? It’s not just me.”

 

Mick looked at the people lining both sides of the wide staircase. They looked like they’d been frozen in time, staring vacantly towards the top of the stairs. Their clothes were decades old, maybe even older. Their demon’s work, then. Trench Coat was going to be an even bigger paint in the ass than he usually was. He’d told them that the demon would pull people from throughout time to use as sacrifices. Ray had been the only one who had backed him up; Nora had been firmly in Mick and Zari’s corner of ‘why would it bother when there are plenty of people here?’

 

“Trench Coat didn’t say anything about human statues.” There had been a lot about blood sacrifices, though.

 

“He didn’t say anything about the legends being wrong about what a succubus does, either. Zari, can you hear me?” Nate tapped at his earpiece hard enough that Mick could hear the thud of his finger against the plastic as they walked up the stairs. “Zari? Ray? Anyone?” He stopped, glancing down at the stained carpet. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this. I’m not getting anything from them. When was the last time I managed to speak to anyone?”

 

Mick shrugged as he turned around, still a few feet ahead of him. “I think it was about an hour ago.”

 

Something came crashing down on the floor above, showering them with a thin layer of dust. Mick and Nate instinctively covered their heads; none of the other people moved.

 

“We should go back.” Nate tugged at the edges of his sleeves. “I mean, we should _really_ go back. We can’t reach any of the others, we have no idea where we are in this place, and we don’t know what we’re facing. And, you know, the human statue thing.”

 

“It’s up to you.” He didn’t really care if they went back sooner or later. They wouldn’t be able to get anything done until someone had dealt with the demon, even if that meant listening to the rest of the team trying to find the demon themselves. Sticking around would be more interesting, though.

 

More crashes, this time accompanied by a scream that didn’t sound human.

 

Nate grinned. “Oh, we’re definitely going.” He slapped Mick hard on the back as he passed him. “Come on.”

 

 

*

 

 

**2020**

 

The dawn light was just starting to make its way between the gap in the curtains when Mick rolled over to squint at the phone he’d propped up on the table to act as a clock. Three in the morning. Too fucking early for sirens. He dragged one hand across his face and wondered if there was any chance that he’d get back to sleep before he had to get up later.

 

Ten minutes later, Mick had already opened Gideon’s little app to monitor the police scanner and was half-heartedly making notes about what he had to do in the shop.

 

Wally had left at around midnight, after they’d finally finished the inventory. Chuck had kept good records but the best records in the world had still meant that they’d spent three days counting books and sorting them into sections. And now Mick had to run the shop for the next six months and hope that Claire didn’t find an excuse to make his life more difficult.

 

Just thinking about it made Mick want to roll over again and go back to sleep. The easiest thing would have been to just let her have the shop. Claire had said that when he’d first heard the terms of his inheritance. The damn lawyer had said that when Mick had picked up the keys. Even Zari, after Mick had told her what he thought Chuck had wanted, had asked him if he didn’t just want to give it to his aunt. The only person who hadn’t told him to just let it go had been Wally, but that could have been because he’d had an entire slice of pizza in his mouth at the time.

 

Chuck had always been a sly bastard. Mick hadn’t appreciated that as a kid. He’d been too young to see the way that he’d tried to make sure that Mick had somewhere to go when his dad’s drinking had been at its worst, and then he’d been too stubborn and full of self-loathing to want to see it.

 

Mick had always made a point of never owing anything to anyone, but he’d owed his uncle, even if it was just to make sure that his aunt didn’t get the shop. Chuck had cut Claire out of his life when he’d taken Mick in against her wishes. Against common sense.

 

With a sigh, Mick sat up. He was sure that he remembered enough from filling sections as a kid to at least get some things done, even if trying to work out the finances side was going to require a call to Zari and Gideon. Fuck knew what he was going to do about anything else.

 

 

*

 

 

“This used to be a lovely area.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

Six hours in, and Mick was already tired of dealing with customers. He didn’t remember the shop being quite so popular when he was a kid. Unfortunately, he _did_ remember the way the customers had always stopped to talk to Chuck. Apparently they wanted to carry on that tradition with him.

 

“It’s not been the same since that Frank started working around here.”

 

“Uh-huh.” He ran his finger down the list of names and dates, trying to figure out which ones were for deliveries, and which ones were about suppliers. One looked like it could have been the name of a courier company, but it could have just as easily have been yet another illegible name.

 

It had been the same thing all morning. If Mick heard one more person complain about this Frank idiot, he was going to find him and kill him himself, just so that people would shut up about him.

 

“Are you listening to me?”

 

His cell rang, and Mick barely glanced at it before he rejected the call. Claire. Of course. She was probably hoping that he was ready to give up by now, the fucking vulture.

 

Mick took a deep breath, forced a smile, and thought about how he knew there was a nice warehouse on the outskirts of town that he’d burned down once as a teenager.

 

“Of course I am,” he said. “You were talking about some criminal called Frank.”

 

The woman nodded seriously. “Yes, he’s a terrible man. You hear about this sort of thing happening in Central City all the time, or in Star City, but not here. This is a nice place. It always has been. But then that Frank moved in with his cronies. If you do something, they don’t like, they burn your business down. He likes to think of himself as an ‘old-school’ mobster. Ha! My husband was one and, let me tell you, he never burned down a daycare in the middle of the night.”

 

The heat gun was in a box under the sink, along with a tool kit. The temptation to pull it out and take a look around was growing by the second.

 

Mick pushed that thought to the back of his mind as the woman continued detailing Frank’s various crimes, ranging from arson to murder – none of them proven, of course.

 

He’d been spending too much time on the Waverider with the heroic idiots. Anyway, he wasn’t much of a hero at the best of times.

 

 

*

 

 

The woman with the red bag was staring at him and had been for the last ten minutes. Nate resisted the urge to sink down in his seat and checked how far away they were from their stop. Three stops to go. Not long to go. Nate stared at the tarnished metal handle on top of the back of the seat in front of him. He could make it three stops. He sure as hell wouldn’t be able to walk that far today.

 

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Slow in, slow out. The woman was harmless. There was no way that she was possessed. This was a safe area, if he didn’t count actual crime. There were no demons here. No monsters.

 

“Uncle Nate?” Roni tugged at his sleeve.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Are you travel sick?”

 

Nate had to laugh at that. “It’s a kind of travel sick,” he admitted, opening his eyes as Roni grabbed two of his fingers and squeezed them. “What’s that for?”

 

Two stops.

 

“It’s what my mom does when Emily gets travel sick and we don’t have a bag.” Roni wrinkled her nose. “She got sick on a train one day when we didn’t have a bag and—”

 

One stop. Nate was suddenly very glad they were close together in the middle of the city.

 

“Time to go,” Nate said, very aware of how uncomfortable several people around them were looking. They were probably expecting Roni to chuck her guts up any second now. She kept clinging to his right hand as he pressed the bell with his left and stood up.

 

Nate avoided looking at the woman with the red bag as he and Roni squeezed past her and down the steps.

 

A jolt of pain ran up his leg as he stepped on to the sidewalk. No worse than usual, but it immediately had Nate looking around for any sign of anyone who could take advantage of it.

 

The street was empty, mainly thanks to the sun going down early. It wasn’t quite dark yet but Nate could see a lot of lights on in the apartments above the shops that lined the street. It was a nice little place at night, he decided, if you ignored the burned-out shop at one end of the street, and the spiderweb shattered glass front of one of the cafes. Quiet. The last time he’d come, it had been in the middle of the day and the street had been so crowded that Nate had done little more than trail after Thomas.

 

Miller’s Books, thankfully, was still open, the bright light visible through the windows and Nate could see a shadow moving across the window as someone walked around inside. One person. That wasn’t so bad. He could deal with one stranger. If he was lucky, maybe Chuck’s relative would turn out to be someone he’d met through Thomas, although Nate already knew that he wasn’t that lucky.

 

“You can go inside first,” Nate said, nudging Roni forward. When she didn’t move, he handed her his wallet. “Pick something for yourself and your sisters.”

 

That was all it took for her to take off, grinning as she ran through the door, leaving Nate alone in the rapidly darkening street.

 

It would be fine, he told himself as he tucked his hands into his coat pockets, shivering against the winter chill in the air. It was supposed to snow this winter, which would make it the first time he’d have to deal with snow with the steel leg. It was going to be bad, but Nate had made it through much worse. Hell, he’d been conscious for most of the time that the leg had been growing in, even if he could only remember half of it.

 

 

*

 

 

“My auntie says he’s not my real uncle, but he gets me better presents than she does. _And_ he knows my birthday. She forgets all the time. She thinks that I was born in August. I was born in January!”

 

Mick was beginning to doubt that the kid’s uncle even existed. She’d been standing in front of the counter on her tiptoes, peering over the edge at him, for the first ten minutes she’d been in the shop. When he’d come downstairs to tidy the kids’ section, she’d followed him and kept talking. She’d been talking for almost fifteen minutes now, pinballing from topic to topic. There was no sign of an uncle. Mick was starting to get a little worried about whoever was supposed to be taking care of the kid.

 

“What did you say your name was again?” he asked as he rearranged a shelf of books so that the title with the most copies was on display.

 

“Veronica!” someone called from upstairs, their voice muffled.

 

The girl’s face lit up and she turned and sprinted up the stairs before Mick could say anything.

 

Mick decided to finish tidying the section. If anyone wanted him, he figured they’d come downstairs – or Veronica would come down. She seemed like the kind of kid who didn’t have a problem asking for help in shops.

 

By the time he’d finished tidying up the picture books and rearranging them on their zig-zags – he’d have to try and find another way to display them if he was going to have to be here for six months; he _hated_ those things – it had been almost half an hour. Veronica was still chattering away upstairs when he started up the stairs.

 

Technically, he was supposed to close now but it wasn’t as if anyone would complain if Mick closed a bit later. There was no boss, not even a captain to tell him what he was and wasn’t supposed to do. The only thing the lawyer cared about was making sure he balanced the books correctly and didn’t drive the store under. Claire, on the other hand, wanted him to do exactly that.

 

“I need to close in less than an hour,” Mick said as he reached the top of the stairs, “so make it…”

 

_Quick_ died on his lips as he took in the man standing against the counter.

 

Nate stared back at him, and if it hadn’t been for the blatant shock written all over his face, Mick could have believed that Wally had set him up. But no, it was too raw and honest for that.

 

Mick’s first thought was that, after everything that had happened, Nate looked good. His second thought was that there was something off about him that made him look like hell. Maybe it was the way his nails were bitten down to the quick, or the dark shadows under his eyes, or the way his hair was a bit too long and he didn’t seem to have spent as much time styling it.

 

He’d spent so long on it once that Gideon had turned out the lights until he’d left the bathroom. And Mick had no idea why the hell he was remembering that. Maybe because he’d been stuck waiting for him outside that damn bathroom for half an hour on that last fucking day.

 

“Mick,” Nate said weakly. He straightened up and pushed himself away from the counter.

 

He favoured his left leg as he took a few steps forward and, although Mick already knew that and knew why, his stomach still clenched uncomfortably as he remembered just how much blood had been on the floor.

 

“Well? Can I, Uncle Nate?”

 

They both stared at Veronica. Whatever she wanted, she didn’t look very impressed that Nate wasn’t listening to her.

 

“Uh, what?” Nate choked out.

 

“Can I go downstairs and look at the books again?”

 

“Sure, knock yourself out.” He coughed. “I told you that you could get one, didn’t I? Don’t forget to pick books for your sisters, too.”

 

“Thank you!”

 

Veronica grinned at Mick as she squeezed past him and ran down the stairs, clutching the handrail. Smart kid.

 

And, unfortunately, she’d just left him alone with Nate.

 

Mick forced himself to look at Nate. From the way that Nate kept looking away, it looked like he was having as much trouble looking at Mick. That didn’t really make him feel better but it did make him feel less cornered. It had always been easier to deal with people who felt just as trapped as Mick did.

 

 

*

 

 

“I didn’t know you were in Keystone,” Nate said as soon as Roni was out of earshot. There had been no sign of the Legends being anywhere near the city. And considering that signs of his old team usually involved destruction and violence, Nate was sure that he hadn’t missed any. Which meant that Mick was definitely in Keystone on his own, without any of the other Legends. That was… weird. He could only remember a handful of times that Mick had even bothered to leave the ship to go somewhere other than Aruba or a dive bar.

 

Mick gestured to the store as he walked around to stand behind the counter. Probably trying to put some distance between them. “I’ve got some personal stuff to take care of. Inheritance.”

 

_Oh_.

 

It all made sense to Nate now. Chuck’s refusal to talk about his nephew in anything but the broadest terms, the lack of detailed stories beyond his teens, and absolutely no information about what he was doing as an adult when he’d even mentioned what his sister did (in the same sentence where he’d mentioned that they hadn’t spoken for decades.)

 

Fuck, Nate hadn’t even known that Mick had any living relatives, let alone any he was on good terms with. The only times it had ever come up, Mick had just made a comment about having burned his family to death and everyone had just left it at that because no one had wanted to pry any further.

 

“He was your uncle, wasn’t he?”

 

Mick looked only slightly less surprised by that comment than he had when he’d spotted Nate. “He talked about me?”

 

Maybe they hadn’t been on good terms, then.

 

“Sometimes.” Nate shifted his weight to his left leg as he tried to remember what Chuck had said. Something about his nephew having been a good kid had stuck in his mind, but he couldn’t remember anything else.  Except… “He told me the chicken story.”

 

Nate felt a bit more of the tension disappear from the shop as Mick shook his head, looking amused. Chuck had told the story about Mick trying to help out with the neighbour’s chickens as a kid, only to end up being knocked into the pond and coming face to face with a giant toad.

 

“Of-fucking-course he did.” Mick turned away and busied himself with a pile books that were sitting on the edge of the desk that ran along the wall and began to sort through them. “You know I was here?”

 

Nate shrugged even though he knew that Mick couldn’t see him. “No, I’m just here to pick up a book that my friend ordered for me – it’s under Thomas MacDonald.”

 

Mick just nodded once, as if that had been the answer he’d been expecting. Maybe it had been. It wasn’t as if Mick had ever made any effort to find Nate after he’d left.

 

Nate had kept his old phone for the first month and spent the entire time dodging calls from everyone else. And, really, Nate understood. He still woke up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night sometimes. He didn’t blame Mick for not wanting to be reminded of what had happened. Except… As he’d sat there in Thomas’ spare room for that first month, Mick’s name had been the one he’d wanted to see on the screen the most.

 

He watched Mick digging around in the piles of haphazardly stacked books that wobbled dangerously whenever he touched one. Something about it felt strangely like being back in the library on the Waverider, except that Nate wasn’t trapped at his desk by the books he’d already checked, and Mick wasn’t grumbling under his breath and holding a beer in one hand while he searched. He’d mentioned something about working in a library once, hadn’t he?

 

Nate searched for the details, but all he could really remember was Mick dropping a thick book on top of the pile Nate had already been balancing on his lap, and complaining about how if he’d wanted to spend all day looking for books, he’d have stayed at library. He didn’t remember if Mick had told him anything else, but Nate remembered that he’d (only half jokingly) suggested that if Mick ever got bored of time travel, he could work in a bookshop and scare off any customers who tried to stay past closing.

 

“This it?” Mick held up a book with an obnoxiously pink post-it stuck on the cover. “A history of… what the hell is that?”

 

“Teotihuacan. It’s an ancient Mesoamerican city in Mexico. Although the title isn’t really that accurate because we don’t know a lot about the early history of the city – even the name is much younger than the city itself and no one’s even sure what its original name was. I suppose ‘a partial history, and a vague one at that’ doesn’t have the same ring to it, though.” Nate took the book and set it down on one of the clear spaces on the counter. He flicked through it carefully and automatically asked Mick, “Do you want to see what I was looking for?”

 

“Sure.” Mick leaned on the edge of the counter as Nate found the page.

 

“This building’s condition is too poor to be able to see it now, but I saw this photograph in low resolution online and needed to find a better copy of it. It was never digitised, and the original was lost, but it takes up a full page in this book, which is better than the two-inch size version I found before.” Nate tapped his finger against the photo, right over the intricate carved design of what looked like a moon surrounded by various plants, which covered a good third of the building. “This symbol shows up all over the place, including on an artefact recovered from a pyramid in Egypt, but this is the oldest one I’ve found.”

 

Mick squinted at the book. “How’d it wind up in Egypt? Or in… whatever it’s called.”

 

“Teotihuacan. That’s not my problem. All I have to do is find it and put all the pieces together to construct some kind of history of it. The how and why of it is somebody else’s problem.”

 

“Huh.” He leaned forward and Nate quickly flipped to the next page so that Mick could read the short description of the building. It was nothing too interesting (or useful) but Mick seemed to like it.

 

There was a bruise with an almost perfectly straight edge right across the back of Mick’s hand. It looked as if he’d dropped a book on it. Nate almost said something about it – he could feel the comment on the tip of his tongue – but something stopped him. It felt just like old times, but the knowledge that things weren’t the same and could never be the same was almost a physical presence beside them.

 

Mick seemed to suddenly realise the same thing. He straightened up and took a few steps back.

 

_How are the others? Was Ray upset when I left? Is Zari still pissed off, because she left a_ really _angry message after I left?_ Nate wanted to ask those questions and so many more – was Constantine still around, were Sara and Ava still together? – but he couldn’t. The words stuck in his throat like concrete, and he could hardly breathe. Mick’s brow furrowed, and he opened his mouth—

 

“Done!” Roni bounded up the stairs and put a small pile of books on the counter. She grinned up at Nate. “I got the ones that I know Emily and Chloe haven’t read yet.”

 

Nate quickly checked the books, making sure that none of them were above Roni’s reading level, or those of her sisters. He recognised most of them as being from the same series that he’d either bought for them before, or from the bookcases at Thomas and Elizabeth’s house. He handed them over for Mick to ring up and checked the time on his phone, and then the bus times on the app. Five minutes until the bus, which meant closer to eight before it arrived. He half-listened to Mick telling him the total and mumbled for him to keep the change as he handed over a handful of notes.

 

“Nate?” Mick said when he was halfway out the door, Roni already climbing up on the bench at the bus stop. “I’ll see you around.”

 

He didn’t sound like he thought he would at all. In fact, it sounded suspiciously like he was saying _goodbye_.

 

“Are you going to be in town for long?” _Please be planning to stick around._

 

“About six months.”

 

Nate nodded. Yeah, of course Mick wasn’t planning to stay. He’d once mentioned that he’d never stayed anywhere for longer than six months before he’d ended up on the Waverider. There was no real reason for Nate to be disappointed. And yet…

 

“I would have still come if I’d known you were here,” Nate said quietly, keeping an eye on Roni. He didn’t give Mick time to respond before he stepped outside and let the door close behind him. “Roni, come on, I think the bus will be here soon.”

 

“Do you know him?” She jumped down and grabbed his hand, pulling him over towards the bench. Nate wasn’t sure why she always wanted him to sit down as quickly as possible, but he suspected it had something to do with what her parents had told her when he’d first come back from the Waverider. “Mom and Dad said that you used to have a lot of friends that you worked with, but now you never even talk to them.” She bit her lip, suddenly looking remarkably like her mother. “I’m not supposed to listen when they talk about those things but they were talking really loud.”

 

“It’s a long story,” Nate said as the bus rounded the corner. “And you’re going to have to tell me what else you’ve heard your mom and dad saying about me.”

 

 

*

 

 

“I hate to say this, Mick, but I don’t know anything about any of this.” There were a few beeps and Gideon said something in the background.  Zari laughed. “Gideon would like me to tell you to just hire someone to do all this for you.”

 

“I can’t do that.”  Mick took a quick look at the stew in the slow cooker. It didn’t look like it would poison him, although he’d have to make sure that he went further than the end of the street soon and did some real shopping. Fuck, he’d have to find out _where_ to go shopping. He didn’t even know what was open anymore. That was another thing for the list.

 

“Why not?”

 

“My records were – what do you call it? Exorcised?”

 

“Expunged?”

 

“That’s it. But if you look me up, the second headline is still about one of the times I was sent to Iron Heights. Nobody wants to be a financial advisor for a convicted felon.”

 

“You could ask Ray. He loves boring stuff like this.”

 

“I mentioned it to Haircut earlier and he talked about coming up with a business plan. I don’t need a business plan. I don’t want a business plan. I’m here for six months, then I’m going to sell this place to somebody who wants it.” He tasted a little bit of the stew. Not bad. Not as good as when Zari had made it, and not even as good as the times she’d ordered him to cut while she cooked, but it was edible and tasted nice. Maybe he’d get more walnuts when he went shopping. “The kid wasn’t that helpful either.”

 

Wally’s suggestion had been to tell him that Nate had once told him a story about how he’d once spent twenty-four hours doing the budget for his entire team at Central City’s museum because someone else had screwed it up. Mick had immediately regretted telling him that he’d seen Nate. Then he’d hung up on him.

 

“Yeah, Wally called me earlier.” Zari was silent for several awkward seconds. Mick could hear Gideon complaining that she’d stopped working. “He told me that you saw Nate. Is he… okay?”

 

“He’s fine; he’s still got the metal leg, and he was with his friend’s kid. He was picking up a book for work. Other than the leg, nothing’s changed.” There was no point in telling her about the look on Nate’s face before he’d left the shop, like he’d been steeling himself to even step outside.

 

“That’s good.”

 

Zari stayed silent, and Mick couldn’t think of anything to say. She’d taken Nate’s departure worse than anyone else, since it had been so close to Amaya’s. They’d all only just adjusted to working without Amaya and Wally when everything had gone to hell. Half the reason that Mick had started giving her copies of the other books had been because she’d lost three of the people she was closest to on the ship in quick succession.

 

“I’ll tell him to call if I see him again,” Mick said quietly. It was a very big ‘ _if_.’ He didn’t think that Nate would ever return to the shop and, even if he did, what was Mick going to say to him? _Call your friends, because they miss you_? If Nate hadn’t called when everyone had been worried that something terrible had happened to him after he’d left the ship, he probably wasn’t going to call anyone now.

 

“Tell him that I’m going to spin him like a top if I ever see him again.”

 

Sales people to contact. A budget to work out. Billing accounts that he needed to sort out before the power was cut off. Mick couldn’t even remember the last time he’d paid a bill – maybe that one time when he and Snart had been hiding out and he’d been using that firefighter’s identity. There would be contact numbers for the companies somewhere, probably in Chuck’s address book. The accounts that Mick had been given access to contained more than enough money to keep up with the payments that were due to come out of them but he’d need to work out what they were for. How _did_ ordering in and getting stock delivered work, anyway?

 

“Mick?”

 

He coughed. “Yeah?”

 

“Do you ever think about what happened that day?”

 

Blood all over the floor, all over Mick’s hands. Nate shouting at him, begging him, screaming, and then those minutes of silence before the screaming had started up again. The smell of burnt flesh and blood heavy in the air. Mick woke up thinking that he could still smell it at least once a week.

 

“Why would I?”

 

 

*

 

 

Nate carefully checked the Steel costume for any damage, the same way he did every night. There was a small dent on the helmet but, other than that, it was almost in the same condition as it had been when he’d taken it from the Waverider the day he’d left. Good. If he damaged it, he was screwed. He’d never even thought of asking Ray if there was anything he had to keep an eye on. There was some kind of tech in the helmet that had died the first time he’d worn it in Keystone, but Nate hadn’t been able to tell if it had been Ray’s work, or something that Gideon and Zari had come up with.

 

After he’d put it back in the closet, Nate sat down on the edge of the bed and checked the point where the steel met skin, running his fingers across the edge of the scar tissue as slowly and carefully as he’d checked the costume. He remembered that Gideon had mentioned that it had been surprisingly clean, considering how it had happened. The attack had almost completely destroyed his knee and severed his leg but, miraculously, the articular cartilage had somehow been unharmed, giving his body a much better base to rebuild the leg on than he could have had.

 

There was no external bleeding tonight, just some bruising above the scar tissue, but Nate’s thigh ached, probably thanks to spending so much time on his feet with Roni.  Checking up on the neighbourhood would have to wait for a little bit.

 

He’d go out tomorrow see what Frank was up to. Maybe he’d even find out who Frank really was.

 

It would be easier, Nate mused as he lay back on the bed and reached across to switch off the lamp, if he had someone to work with.

 

He’d almost considered asking Thomas, but Thomas had his wife and kids, so that had taken him out of the equation. Wally was, according to the sightings of Kid Flash, working all over the place.

 

Mick was in town. They’d made a good team in the past. That thought had kept coming to Nate since he’d seen Mick at the bookshop. Despite everything, Nate had spent the entire bus ride back to his apartment wondering how he’d be able to come up with a good excuse to visit the shop again. Those minutes when he’d been telling Mick about the carvings on the building in Teotihuacan had been the first time since he’d left the Waverider that he’d felt like himself. All he’d needed was Zari forcing herself to look interested and Ray asking questions, and it would have been just like old times.

 

Nate rolled over to face the window, watching the light from headlights passing by outside shine across the window. It occasionally made it through the small gap between the blinds and the sill and between the books, casting long shadows across the bedroom.

 

He’d go back to the shop in a few days, after he came up with a good excuse.


	3. Chapter 3

**2018**

 

Wrong size. Wrong shape. Wrong origin.

 

Nate flipped through the pages on the next book. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Still nothing. He’d gone through every single book in the library, had Gideon check wherever she could, and there was still no sign of what the hell that symbol carved on the wall was. Even John had been clueless, to the point that he’d taken a phone and agreed to contact them if he found out anything about it.

 

“Nate!” Sara snapped her fingers in front of his face, and Nate looked up, letting the book fall to the floor. “Mick’s been waiting for half an hour, and he says that he’s going back to bed if you don’t hurry up.”

 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, I’ve just been at this for this for a few days, unless you count Monday, when I left for two hours but came right back.” Nate snatched the book up off the floor and carefully put it back in its place on the self.

 

Sara put one hand on each side of his face as she looked him in the eye, squinting, suddenly far more concerned. “It’s Sunday. You only came back here yesterday. Don’t you remember?” She frowned as she looked him up and down. “Are you okay?”

 

“Of course I remember, I told you already, I’m fine. I was generalising,” he said, pulling away before Sara could ask him anything else, backing out the door to the library. “I can’t keep Mick waiting.”

 

*

 

Nate stared at his reflection in the mirror of the Waverider’s tiny bathroom as he finished styling his hair.

 

No. He didn’t remember. In fact, Nate realised as he added a little more Royal Crown pomade, he had no idea what he’d been doing. He knew he’d been trying to figure out what the demon was, remembered looking through book after book, but it all blurred together. He’d slept, right? He’d definitely meant to take a few breaks to nap. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he’d just pulled a few too many all-nighters.

 

Someone banged on the door so hard that Nate knocked over half the toothbrushes as he lurched forward.

 

“Hurry the fuck up, Pretty, we don’t have all day.”

 

Mick, pissed off and wanting to get this over with. Okay. That was fine. Nate rubbed his eyes and took one last look in the mirror – the circles under his eyes looked a little _too_ dark, more like bruises than anything else – before he opened the door.

 

“Some of us need longer to get ready than others,” he said, trying for light and airy, but Mick just look unimpressed.

 

“You won’t need long after I shave your head, I promise. I wanted to watch the game, not go demon hunting.” Mick frowned as he pushed himself away from the wall opposite the bathroom. He didn’t look quite as concerned as Sara had, but Mick looking openly concerned at all was a bad thing. “You look like shit, Pretty.”

 

Nate huffed a laugh. “You can talk.” It was true. However bad Nate looked – and he was sure he looked awful – there was no way that Mick looked much better. He looked like he’d hardly slept for a week.

 

“Haven’t been sleeping,” Mick said as he picked up the heat gun and started walking without checking to see if Nate was following him. What’s your excuse?”

 

“The same one.” That was what was wrong. Nate remembered that much. Sitting in the library or in his room, staring at the clock, willing his eyes to close or for time to move faster. Except there was something else there that Nate couldn’t quite get to.

 

Standing in front of the console, looking something up. Gideon asking him something. Zari asking him a question. Sara and Ava saying good morning. Mick catching his eye in the bathroom mirror, saying something about how he looked how Mick felt. Nothing sounded right, the words all distorted.

 

Nate shrugged off the feeling. It was just the lack of sleep and the fact that he hadn’t been sleeping that well since Amaya left in the first place. Hell, if Mick was an accurate measurement, no one on the ship had been sleeping much lately.

 

For some reason, that wasn’t as comforting as Nate expected it to be.

 

“Come on, I’ll make a deal: if we get this over with quickly, I’ll go to that great place in Central City to get some real wings instead of Gideon making them.”

 

 

*

 

 

**2020**

 

_“A recent spate of midnight robberies has citizens asking what Keystone Police Department is doing to keep them and their families safe. Crime has been on the increase for the last six months and many believe that organised crime is to blame.”_

 

“Are you going to keep playing with that, or are you finished with it?” Elizabeth asked as she switched off the television.

 

Nate stopped crushing the broccoli with his fork and pushed his plate away. “Sorry, El.”

 

Elizabeth shot Thomas a significant look as she gathered up the rest of the plates and went into the kitchen to finish loading up the dishwasher, narrowly avoiding Roni as she ran through the dining room, holding one of Chloe’s games aloft, shrieking that her sister would never get it back. Chloe ran after her, yelling that she was going to kill her when she caught her. Emily, always the more reserved of the twins, didn’t even look away from the game she was playing. Maybe she’d even put her up to it so that she didn’t have to fight Chloe over what game they were playing.

 

“Something on your mind?” Thomas asked as he wiped the table, brushing any spilled food into a napkin to go in the trash, and blotting at the rings of condensation from the glasses and bottles they’d used.

 

Nate shrugged. “Nothing much.” Unless he counted running into Mick, and not having the courage to go back. Even if he thought about it every single night and morning. He glanced over at Emily, who didn’t look like she could see anything except the mini-boss she was fighting. The water in the kitchen was running so hard that he doubted that Elizabeth could hear them. “I, uh, I saw someone I used to work with a few days ago. Someone who was part of the research group.”

 

Thomas froze, stretched comically across the table. He looked at Emily as well. “The research group, huh? Someone you knew well?”

 

“A member of my team. He was…” Nate swallowed hard. “He was there when the car crashed. Mick.”

 

At that, Thomas gave up on trying to do anything and sat down beside Nate, leaning close enough that there was no chance that anyone would overhear them unless they were inches away. “The one who—”

 

“Yeah.” Thomas didn’t know every detail, but he knew the essential ones. Nate and Mick had ended up in trouble. Nate had lost his leg from the knee down. Mick had cauterised the wound to keep Nate from bleeding to death. Nate had left the team shortly afterwards and hadn’t seen anyone from the team since. “Chuck Miller was his uncle and he’s taking care of Miller’s Books for now.”

 

There was no point in mentioning the constant _I want to go back, I want to go back, I_ need _to go back_ that had been thrumming in Nate’s veins since he’d left the shop. Thomas knew a surprising amount, understood more than Nate had ever expected him to, but Nate didn’t expect him to understand this. There wasn’t even a way to explain it anyway. How was he supposed to tell someone who had never set foot on the ship just how much seeing the people he’d worked with and lived with on the Waverider felt like felt like coming _home_ in a way that coming to Keystone, or even visiting his parents, never had?

 

“What are you going to do?”

 

“About what?”

 

Thomas sighed. “Don’t play stupid, Nate; you’ve never been very good at it. Are you going to go back and see him, or are you going to avoid him like you’ve been doing for the last year and a half?”

 

“I haven’t been—”

 

“So it was just a coincidence that you just happened to visit your parents for a week when one of those conspiracy theorists posted about seeing what they thought was a spaceship last year? And you just really needed to pull three all-nighters at the museum when some of them were seen in Keystone?”

 

Nate closed his mouth. Okay, so Thomas had a point. Nate _had_ avoided anywhere he’d thought that the Legends would show up. Not just because he had no idea which ones he was going to meet – he’d had one horrifying incident when he’d almost gone to visit them and then realised he was watching _himself_ leave the ship – but because he hadn’t wanted to have the whole ‘you left in the middle of a mission and we had no idea what had happened to you’ conversation. Now he thought about it, they’d probably had to ask Gideon what had happened. He hadn’t even managed to leave a note before he’d grabbed his most important belongings and fled.

 

“It doesn’t matter what I want. Mick didn’t look like he ever wants to see me again.” Which was fine. Nate could live with that. He’d lived with much worse for the last year and a half. He’d lived with not being able to talk to most of the people he cared about, he’d lived with hardly ever seeing his mom because he was afraid she’d notice something was wrong, he’d lived with the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach whenever he had to leave his apartment and have people look at him, and he’d lived with the sensation of the steel serum repeatedly repairing whatever damage it couldn’t permanently fix simply by existing. It was awful, but Nate had survived it, and he could survive a lot longer.

 

“You’re just going to avoid him until he leaves town again, or are you never going near the shop again in case you run into him?”

 

“What does it matter?”

 

“Talking to him would be good—"

 

“What the hell am I supposed to say to him, Tom?” Nate snapped, slamming his hands on the table. “’Hey, Mick, I know the last time we had a real conversation, I was crying and screaming and begging you to cauterise my leg so that I didn’t bleed to death on the ship floor, and then I left without a word to you or anyone else, but how are you enjoying your time in Keystone City?’”

 

Thomas opened and closed his mouth a few times, lost for words, before he shook his head. Nate sighed and opened his mouth, ready to apologise—

 

“Dad, Uncle Nate, you guys are talking really loudly, Chloe and Roni are gonna hear,” Emily said quietly without looking away from the screen. “If you’re gonna keep talking about Uncle Nate and his hero friends, you should go somewhere else. Or you can come play, Uncle Nate. This is one of the ones you don’t suck at.”

 

_How the hell does she know?_ Nate mouthed at Thomas, who couldn’t seem able to do anything more than shake his head, doing an amazing impression of a horrified goldfish, complete with bulging eyes.

 

Yeah, he was going to be no help. Thomas left, presumably to panic to Elizabeth in the kitchen, and Nate got to his feet and crossed to where Emily was sitting in the living room.

 

“How did you know, anyway?” Nate asked as he sat down on the floor beside her and took one of the spare controllers.

 

“You have a _metal leg_ ,” Emily said, with all the gravity of a kid who had worked out that she had more common sense than at least a few of the adults in her life. “You disappeared for two years and you came back weirder than you were before.” She reached over to press the button so that he could actually play before adding, still staring at the screen, “I like reading about the heroes. You used to babysit us all the time so I knew it was you. You were my favourite.”

 

Nate smiled as he started to play, following Emily’s lead, and probably doing terribly (she’d lied; it was only one of the ones he sucked less at.) “Thanks, Em, that’s actually a really nice thing to hear.”

 

And it _was_. It was weird to hear someone telling him that he had been their favourite. The Legends were easily the least known group of heroes or vigilantes, thanks to them operating across time rather than in one particular city, so only the hardcore hero hunters really knew who they were – and even then, Nate was sure most of them could only pick Ray and Sara out of a line-up because they’d been active in Star City. The closest Nate had ever had to any real profile as a hero had been when he’d been working in Central City with Wally.

 

“What do you think I should do? You know, since you’re in the know, you should have a say. Your dad has, and your mom will later on.” And probably several more times if they thought Nate was making the wrong decision. The bad side of being close friends with a married couple who had known you for years.

 

Emily shrugged. “Go, right and I’ll go left and we’ll ambush them.” She nodded approvingly as he did as he was told. “You miss your friend, right? You should see him.”

 

And maybe, Nate wondered as he tried to avoid being set on fire by a dragon, it really was that simple.

 

 

*

 

 

Mick was crouching by the filing cabinet, trying to make sense of Chuck’s delivery schedule when he heard someone knocking on the door to the alley.

 

It was better than the front door making that beeping noise it made with every customer. He’d have to find out how to turn that off. Or smash the stupid thing to bits if he couldn’t find an off button. It was bad enough that he had to talk to people all day every day, but having an annoying sound to tell him that he was about to do so made it even worse.

 

“We’re closed, go away and come back tomorrow,” he shouted without looking up. Mick had loved his uncle but he’d never taken any notice of the haphazard way that he’d ‘filed’ delivery notes when he was a teenager. The only pro was that Chuck had kept doing it the same way until he died – shoving it in a drawer in the filing cabinet. There was a lot of crap in there, but at least it was all in the same place.

 

A few minutes later someone coughed and knocked on the counter. Fucking hell.

 

“I was hoping you wouldn’t mind talking to me after you close.”

 

Mick slowly stood up, hardly noticing when he stepped on a pile of delivery notes from 2015.

 

Sure enough, Nate was standing on the other side of the door, bundled up in a thick coat and wearing gloves. There was no surprise on his face this time, but he didn’t seem sure that he was welcome, from the way he kept glancing towards the door like he expected Mick to start shoving him towards it.

 

“It was unlocked, by the way,” he said as he pulled off his gloves. He shifted from one foot to the other, uneasy. Or maybe just uncomfortable. It had to be cold outside if he was wearing gloves, and Mick didn’t know a whole lot about anatomy or metal, but he didn’t think that the cold went well with that leg. Nate had always gotten cold easily.

 

“Didn’t think you’d come back,” Mick admitted, stepping over the other delivery notes.

 

Nate shrugged. “I wasn’t sure either, but all of my friends who aren’t heroes told me to. Which is a grand total of three people, by the way. It turns out that an eleven-year-old had the best solution to my problem. If I want to see you, I should just come see you. She also told me to smash a window if you didn’t let me in, though.”

 

“Smart kid.” There were enough smashed windows in the neighbourhood without Nate’s whoever-she-was joining in.

 

They stood there in silence as Mick searched for something to say. What the hell was there to say? Other than something along the lines of _why the fuck did you leave like that, what have you been doing for the last year and a half, are you okay?_

 

Nate fidgeted with his gloves, looking at the books on the closest shelves. He leaned closer to get a better look at the Rebecca Silver one in the display case.

 

“Did Chuck ever show you the rare books?” It was the only thing that Mick could think of. If Chuck had, he was shit out of luck, but Chuck had been a cagey bastard about a few things, and nice books were one of them. And Nate had always liked books that had been printed long before he was born. Although, fuck, he hadn’t considered the whole leg situation. “They’re downstairs. In case you can’t. Do stairs,” he added awkwardly.

 

Nate laughed a little bit at that. “I can manage stairs, Mick. Well, most of the time, but unless you’re planning to make me run a few laps around the block before we go downstairs, I’ll be fine. I’m tougher than I look.”

 

He always had been, Mick thought as he locked the door to the alley and the front door. He hadn’t thought much of Nate the first time they’d met. He’d looked too soft, too coddled by whatever he’d done back home, that Mick had taken one look at him and half-expected him to get killed soon after the they found the rest of the team. He’d almost been right, too, except Ray had come through with that modified serum just in time. Then Nate had been tougher than any of them, unless that stuff Ray’s suit was made of was involved.

 

They walked down the short flight of stairs to the basement level, Mick trying not to listen too closely to Nate’s footsteps. It didn’t work. It was impossible not to hear the difference in his steps. The way his right foot sounded like it was hitting the floor harder.

 

“I asked your uncle to show me them once,” Nate said as they reached the bottom of the stairs. He winced slightly – the bottom step was a different height to the others, with a longer drop to the floor. “He told me that I’d have to pay him if I wanted to see them, even if I was one of his best customers.”

 

“That sounds like him.” If Chuck had ever had kids, they wouldn’t have been as well guarded as the books were. Mick had only been allowed in the room shortly before the fire and, even then, it had only been if Chuck was there. It had been one of a long list of things that Claire had liked to scream about.

 

Mick unlocked the door to the room and gestured for Nate to go in ahead of him. If it gave him time to check that it didn’t look like there was anything up with Nate, well, that was just a coincidence. And Nate looked fine, or as fine as he could. There was a slight limp, but he’d had that before the stairs, and on the day when he’d first showed up at the shop.

 

The rare books room had better climate control than anywhere else Mick had ever been. Everything from the moisture in the air to the temperature was monitored via computers in the corner. Gideon would have been proud of Chuck’s set-up; it had been the most modern thing in the entire building when Mick had moved in. Still was, unless he counted the laptop and printer that he’d reluctantly allowed Wally to give him. Or, more accurately, Wally had conveniently left them set up at one of the desks upstairs and Mick had allowed him to leave them there for six months as long as he could use them.

 

“This is so cool,” Nate breathed as he walked around the room, peering at the shelves that lined the walls. “Mick, these are amazing – I haven’t even seen some of these in museums, let alone shops. How did your uncle even get these?”

 

“Some of the old guys didn’t have anyone to leave them to so they left them to him.”

 

The collection had been a lot smaller when Mick was a kid. It had covered only a single wall, but now the one with the entrance was the only one that was free of shelves and books. Some of the books – ones that Mick had never quite been sure had been acquired legally by their old owners – even had their own mini cases.  The only pieces of furniture in the entire room that weren’t shelves or cases were a table and two chairs. A box of cotton gloves sat at the side of the table.

 

“Can I?” Nate gestured between the gloves and one of the books.

 

“Sure.” It wasn’t like Nate would damage them. Mick had seen him hold books like they were babies, something precious to be protected and he couldn’t resist adding, “Don’t forget to support its head,” as Nate slipped on a pair of the gloves.

 

“That was a very fragile book and you know it would’ve fallen apart if I hadn’t been so careful.” He pulled one of the books from the shelf and gently placed it on the table before he opened it and started checking the pages for… something.

 

“Chuck’s had that one since I was a kid.”

 

Mick tried not to watch him, but it was impossible. He’d seen Nate do this hundreds of times and he recognised the way that his face lit up and the tension seemed to seep out of his body when he found what he was looking for. Not for the first time, it felt almost like they were back on the Waverider, Mick watching as Nate researched, trying not to look like he was actually paying any attention to what he was doing. Nate touched the tip of one finger to one of the pictures on the page before he looked up, bright eyed and grinning.

 

“I spent years looking for this when I was doing my PhD,” he said. “I can’t believe it was in a shop in Keystone City all along. I never did find it then.”

 

“You did your PhD on stories?”

 

Nate rolled his eyes. “They’re not _stories_ , they’re a collection of myths and legends that were passed down through hundreds of years, and this is one of the oldest written versions. And my PhD was on the way that history has been recorded by different cultures, particularly in times of upheaval, and the survival of different aspects of it. This, for example, contains stories which were originally passed down from person to person, then recorded as art, and _then_ written down. I always wanted to see it. Historically, it’s huge. Personally… I always wanted to read the stories, which is stupid, because it’s in a dead language that can’t even really be translated because we don’t know enough about Pictish to even start. I know all the stories by heart, though. Well, the versions that were passed down in English anyway. Mick, these are _amazing_.”

 

Mick stepped forward to get a better look at the page. There was very little writing on it, and it looked more like a jumble of random letters to him than anything else, but the art on the pages looked like it belonged on the wall of a museum. It looked like the kind of stuff that Mick would have stolen at one point.

 

“You could make so much money off these,” Nate said as he looked up, “and I’m not even talking about selling them. I know so many people who would pay for just a few hours with these; if you were willing to rent them out, you could make hundreds, maybe even over a thousand bucks for some of them, depending on the books and how long you’d let people keep them for.”

 

“Nerds would really pay that much for these?” The books were all in decent condition, but Mick still couldn’t see that much money in them.

 

“You’ve obviously never met a historian desperate for the books that contain crucial information.” Nate grinned. “I once flew halfway around the world so view the only readable copy of a book that I needed for my PhD. And I wasn’t even the worst one; some of the people I know from college learned other languages for theirs. I’m not talking short phrases, I’m talking fluency and archaic terms. I think my boss at the museum would pay a lot to rent this for a month—” He cut himself off, biting down on his lower lip. “Sorry. I, uh, kind of let the idea get away from me a bit. These are your books, not mine. You don’t have to rent them or you can sell them if you want, it’s your decision.”

 

Mick shook his head. “I need to make sure this place does well or my aunt’ll want it back and I don’t want her getting it. Tell me more about your idea.”

 

Nate nodded, but he didn’t get the chance to say anything before his stomach rumbled loudly. “Sorry. I haven’t eaten for about nine hours.” He shrugged. “I spent a lot of time convincing myself to come here. Feels kinda stupid now that I’m here.”

 

“I’ve got food upstairs,” Mick offered. At Nate’s look, he added, “I made it myself.”

 

“Oh, now this I’ve got to try. I watched you avoid cooking as much as you could for two years.”

 

And maybe it felt strangely like old times as Mick watched Nate tear himself away from the book and leave the room, already asking what Mick had, and if he’d cooked it himself or whether he’d visited the Waverider to get Gideon to make it and then brought it back.

 

 

*

 

 

It turned out that Mick really could cook or, rather, he _would_ cook. Nate had always known that Mick was capable of cooking – thanks to a few times that Mick had slipped up, Zari being as good at keeping secrets as anyone else on the Waverider, and one memorable night where Nate had traded silence for half a chicken – but what Mick was able to do and what he was willing to do had always been two very different things.

 

He could cook, but Nate had watched him avoid doing so for years.

 

“When did you even start cooking?” Nate asked as he watched Mick stir the stew. “I once watched you lock yourself in your room all evening because Sara suggested making dinner a team activity.”

 

Mick shrugged. “You forget what Blondie’s cooking tastes like?”

 

Ah, that made sense. Unfortunately for the team, Sara’s numerous talents didn’t include cooking. The few times she hadn’t left it to Gideon, it had been a toss-up between whether it was surprisingly nice and edible, or the kind of thing that had made Nate suggest getting a dog so that they could feed the ‘food’ to it.

 

“And Ray likes healthy food.”

 

“Right. Zari told me that if I didn’t help her, she’d tell everybody that – well, she made me help her. There are knives and forks in one of the drawers and a couple of bowls in one of the cupboards, make yourself useful and find them.”

 

There were about twelve drawers and none of them were labelled. Everything in them was neatly organised, but Nate doubted that Mick had done it. He’d seen Mick’s organisational methods before and they were more along the lines of ‘this pile is of that’ and ‘the other pile is for that.’ Two drawers in and he could only find cake tins and baking trays.

 

“None of the new people can cook?” Mick stopped stirring and turned to stare at him. “What? You thought I wasn’t keeping an eye on you all? I left, Mick, I didn’t wipe my memories when I did.”

 

_I started updating the file that I used to track the Waverider down when we met_ sounded almost desperate in his head. Maybe it was, just a little. He’d been stalking them through time for a year and a half, but he’d left the city whenever there had been any sign that any of the Legends were in town. He’d still gone to the bookshop, though. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he would have gone to the shop if he’d known that Mick was going to be there.

 

There was a tense silence when Mick turned back to heating the food through. Nate busied himself with searching the rest of the drawers. There was one thing that Nate knew about Mick’s uncle: his kitchen put even the Waverider’s to shame. By the time he found the knives and forks, he’d also found everything from a hand blender to a spiraliser that looked like the one that Zari had on the Waverider. Was there any way for Nate to ask if she was still pissed at him without it sounding weird now?

 

“You could’ve called, you know,” Nate said suddenly, surprising himself. He put the bowls and forks on the little island beside the oven, picking at the remains of a label that was stuck to one of the forks. “Zari called. Wally called. Sara called. Ray called. Constantine called. I think even Nora called because Ray was upset. Ava even tracked me down to Thomas’ place three weeks after I left the ship and called me there. The only person who didn’t even try was you.”

 

“You didn’t pick up for anybody else.” Mick split the stew between the two bowls. “What was the point of me trying?”

 

“Because you were there. You know what it was like. You were the only one who knew what it was like. Everything that happened. How it felt.” His heart was starting to pound, that was a bad sign. Nate took a deep breath and grabbed his own bowl, turning away so that he couldn’t see Mick’s face – and so that Mick couldn’t see his. “I told you the other day that I would’ve come to the shop even if I did know you were there. I wanted you to call. I wanted to come looking for me. And I know it’s stupid, because everyone who’s spent more than two days on the ship knows that the only person around who’s better at running from their problems than you are is Constantine.”

 

“I don’t know. You did a great job running yourself when you left. You even waited until the rest of us were off the ship. That’s more than I’d do.”

 

There were a few seconds of silence, where Nate wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, before he let out a shaky laugh. Of course that was this was about. Of course. He sat down on one of the stools at the table, grimacing at the slight pull of the steel part of his leg before he rested his foot on one of the supporting bars. It didn’t hurt, it just felt a bit wrong to be able to feel the connection between steel, flesh, and bone that much. Like wiggling a loose tooth that was still attached but with little sensation at the connection point.

 

“It was more of a limp than a run,” he said when he was sure that his voice wasn’t going to crack and that he wasn’t going to struggle to breathe halfway through the sentence.

 

Mick dropped his fork into the bowl with a loud clang as he sat down on the other side of the table. He stared at Nate before he dropped his gaze to the table. Nate did the same. “Fuck.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

They ate in silence.

 

 

*

 

 

The stew was surprisingly good. Nate vaguely remembered Zari roping him into making something similar shortly after Amaya left, although he hadn’t been very good at it. She’d said that he cut vegetables like he was trying to make doorstops and banned him from trying to cook anything that she liked to eat.

 

“I’m sorry I left without saying anything,” Nate said, prodding at the last piece of stew with his fork. He smiled weakly at the look on Mick’s face. “Come on, Mick, I’m not stupid. You’ve never been as good at lying as you think you are.”

 

“I don’t think I’m a good liar.” He held out his hand for the now empty bowl.

 

“Exactly. You suck at lying.” For all his flaws, Mick was unflinchingly honest unless he had a very big reason not to be, usually when he was lying about something painful. Like actually caring and trying to deny it.

 

It was only when Mick was washing the dishes at the sink that he muttered something so quickly that Nate missed it under the sound of the tap running.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Mick said, louder, his attention firmly on the dishes. He scrubbed the pot like it had personally offended him.

 

Nate grinned. “I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you apologise for anything.” He leaned across the narrow gap to nudge at Mick’s arm. “Don’t make a habit of it; it’s weird.”

 

“I won’t.” The dishes clean and left to dry, Mick returned to the table with two bottles of beer and handed one to Nate. “You still drink?”

 

Instead of answering him, Nate just drank half of the bottle as quickly as he could. It tasted exactly as he remembered; not great, but drinkable, especially with some food. Chicken wings, they went well with the beer. That had been what they’d been planning to have when everything had gone to hell. Or, rather, when a demon _hadn’t_ gone to hell and everything else had gone down the toilet.

 

“So, you’re here for six months. Have you got any plans or…?”

 

“My aunt Claire wants the shop, Chuck wanted me to have it, and I have to keep it going for six months or I have to sign it over to Claire. She’d love that because she hates me. There are people in Central City, who I used to run with before I ended up on the Waverider, who hate me less than she does. Most of them try to kill me if they see me.”

 

“Why does she hate you so much?”

 

He smiled bitterly. “I killed her sister, Pretty.”

 

“Oh. Sorry, I...”

 

“You forgot?”

 

“No, I just… I thought that since your uncle talked about you and left you this place, maybe you still had a decent relationship with them for a while.”

 

Mick snorted. “Claire never liked me, she was always telling my mom there was something wrong with me. She was right – I kept starting fires – but Chuck was like my mom; he always had to see the best in people. It never did much for him in the end and you know what _he_ was like and how I turned out, so that didn’t do much for any of us. Claire, though, she knew something bad when she saw it. She saw it in _him_ and she saw it in me.”

 

_Him_ being Mick’s dad. Nate frowned, reluctant to interrupt Mick, who seemed to be lost in thought as he stared at the label on his bottle. He’d known Mick for long enough to know that Mick had more than his fair of bad qualities – although, really, half the people who had set foot on the Waverider did, and that was probably to make up for the people there who had less than their fair share – but that he wasn’t a bad person. He just had a bit of a problem with fire. He even managed to keep it under control most of the time. In fact, Nate could only remember a handful of times that Mick’s pyromania had reared its head in inconvenient ways, and it had usually been the least dangerous thing going on at the time.

 

“Anyway, she wants the shop, I don’t want the shop, but Chuck wanted me to at least give it a try. He was a stubborn bastard like that.” He shrugged, looking a bit lost as he gestured to the shop below. “Here I am. Trying. I’m not very good at it. Too many people, too much math. I can do schedules and stuff like that, but I can’t do the rest of it. Zari can’t help because she doesn’t get it either. She wants you to call her or she’ll use her totem on you. She took it hard when you left.”

 

Zari had left the most messages. Nate had listened to all of them multiple times, and had sat with the phone in his hand, tempted to call her back, but unable to tell her why he’d left. How could he have explained it? He hadn’t even been able to tell Ray.

 

Nate cleared his throat. “You know, I’m not too bad at math. I could take a look at the books for you, maybe even put together a business plan.”

 

“Why would you do that?”

 

“Because I have way too much free time now, and because we’re friends.” Nate didn’t quite hold his breath after saying that, but it was a close one.

 

He and Mick had always walked a strange line when they’d both been on the ship.  They’d been friends, yes, but it had always been a different type of friendship than what they shared with other people on the team. More than once, before and after Amaya, he’d wondered if it was possible for there to be something more there. Not that he’d ever gotten around to even bringing it up; he hadn’t even been sure that Mick had any interest in men until that second time in Aruba when Nate had walked in on him with some guy who’d been not-so-subtly staring at Mick for most of the day.

 

“Friends,” Mick echoed, like he was testing the word to see if it would break.

 

“Unless you know another word for when you’ve saved each other’s lives and saved the world together.”

 

If Mick did, he didn’t have a chance to tell Nate. There was a bang and the sound of glass shattering from somewhere outside. Nate was at the window in seconds, squinting at the shadowy figure in one of the shops on the other side of the streets. The jeweller where Thomas had bought an anniversary gift. There was nothing on the street and no parking, the closest alley was the one that ran along the side of and then behind the bookshop, and there was a parking lot over the short wall at the back.

 

“Ignore it,” Mick said at the exact second that Nate turned towards the door.

 

Nate shook his head. “I can’t.”

 

He heard Mick shouting something as he ran down the stairs.

 

 

*

 

 

The alley was almost pitch black, the top few feet illuminated only by the light from the windows of the apartments above the stores on either side. Nate staggered to a halt halfway down it, suddenly realising just what he’d done. He had no way of knowing if there was anyone there unless he heard them. No way of defending himself. He didn’t know any exits other than the ones at either end. He wasn’t even wearing his suit.

 

The alley felt a lot colder as the horror set in. Nate backed up a few steps, intending to head back to Mick’s apartment, back to safety, but a click behind him stopped him in his tracks.

 

“Why does somebody always have to be a hero?” A man with greying black hair stepped out of the shadows, blocking Nate’s path back to Mick’s place. In the light from the doorway, he looked familiar, as if Nate had maybe seen his face on the news once or twice. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder, probably full of his loot, a held a gun pointed squarely at Nate’s chest.

 

“I wouldn’t do that if I was you.” Mick stepped out of the doorway, the heat gun pointed right at the man.

 

The man laughed. “Mick Rory, as I live and breathe.”

 

That was all he needed. One of Mick’s old friends. Those encounters never ended well. The last one Nate had met had been so coked up that a conversation with the guy had been like navigating a maze. The one before that had been the version of Snart who had murdered the other version of Mick.

 

“Santini, you bastard, what the fuck are you doing in Keystone?” Mick asked, keeping the heat gun trained on him. He edged closer, so quietly that Nate was sure that Santini didn’t even realise. “Central City get boring?”

 

“I thought you’d have heard since you run with the heroes now: Central City’s overrun with them; Keystone’s prime real estate.” Santini’s eyes darted between the mouth of the alley and Nate, and Nate could see him doing the math.

 

There was no easy way for Mick to shoot Santini with the heat gun and _not_ hit Nate. The spread was simply too wide. But Santini could fire and miss if he wasn’t careful, and then there was no way that he’d get out of the alley without third degree burns.

 

“Interesting run your friend’s got.” Santini looked over his shoulder at Mick and tilted the gun to aim at Nate’s right knee. Nate’s blood ran cold.

 

A smaller target, but much more effective.

 

“Don’t,” he managed, hearing his voice crack even as he spoke, as he failed to steel up.

 

Mick lowered the heat gun a fraction, his attention shifting to Nate, his expression changing from annoyance to concern.

 

That was all Santini needed. He fired.

 

Nate hit the ground hard, pain shooting up his leg. He felt the heat as the stream of the heat run passed right over his head, but Mick’s aim had been off enough.

 

Santini ran.

 

 

*

 

 

**2018**

 

Another room full of bodies, all neatly lining the walls like they were waiting for something. The demon, probably. At least Nate hoped they were waiting for the demon.

 

“I think this is going to put me off my lunch,” Nate said as he edged his way around a discarded body in the middle of the room.

 

“More for me.” Mick walked right through the ooze that surrounded the body.

 

“Gideon’s going to kill you if you don’t wipe your feet before you go back on the ship. Or she’ll give you non-alcoholic beer.”

 

“That’s worse than death.” He wiped one boot on the carpet, leaving a smear of disgusting black goo for almost a foot. “That’s not normal.”

 

“Because demon goop always plays by the rules of—”

 

The comms burst into life.

 

“Nate, Mick, can you hear me?” Zari shouted. “John and Nora couldn’t contain it, it broke the anti-magic gun, and we’ve lost it. You need to get out of there now!”

 

Nate’s reply died on his lips just as Mick grabbed his arm. Or, rather, it didn’t even reach them, trapped somewhere in his throat as time slowed down around them. That had been in the book that Constantine had shown them. It slowed down time, and then it took you to use as a skin suit.

 

One of the bodies – one of the _skin suits_ – stepped out of the line and started towards them unnaturally fast, its feet hardly touching the floor, its limbs moving strangely, like a puppet with broken strings.

 

Up close, it was obvious that there was something horribly wrong with the body it was using. The eyes were sunken too far into the skull, the mouth was slack, and the skin was deathly pale. This close, Nate could smell the rotting flash. The body was already breaking down.

 

Dead. It hadn’t just possessed her, it had hollowed her out until there was nothing alive left in her.

 

“I’ve been in your head,” it said as it approached, hefting the axe over its shoulder. Or, rather, it didn’t say. Whatever it was using to communicate, it was doing it inside Nate’s own head as well as in the room. The voice sounded like an echo in an auditorium. “I know what makes you _weak_. You gave me everything.”

 

A chill ran down Nate’s spine. The blade looked as if it was glistening. Dwarf star alloy and magic.

 

Nate took a step back, but it was like he was trying to swim through superglue; every single movement was so slow and took so much effort that he barely managed to take a single step before the demon was only a few feet away.

 

There was a crackle of static as the time courier opened a door behind them, but Nate knew that it was too late even as he felt Mick’s grip tighten on his arm. He watched the demon swing the axe towards his leg, knowing even as he steeled up automatically that it wasn’t going to be enough. That something awful was about to happen.

 

There was a sharp tug at Nate’s arm as Mick managed to get one hand through the portal. The spell broke.

 

It was still too late.

 

The axe hit his right leg just at the knee, slicing through the steel effortlessly.

 

Nate fell backwards as Mick yanked him through, and they both hit floor of the medical bay.

 

For a few seconds, as Nate felt the blood beginning to seep across the floor, there was nothing but the sound of Mick making a horrified, confused noise and Nate’s own shaky breathing, both seeming impossibly loud.

 

And then the pain hit.


End file.
